“Telling It Slower, Seeing It Closer”: Slow Journalism and Graphic Narratives in Vanni

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-533-1_62How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Slow journalism; graphic narratives; hypervisibility; ethical storytelling; postcolonial trauma; visual culture; memory

Abstract

In an era dominated by speed, immediacy, and the saturation of digital media, slow journalism has emerged as a powerful counterforce, emphasising depth, accuracy, narrative nuance, and ethical storytelling. This research paper explores the convergence of slow journalism and graphic narratives through a critical examination of Vanni: A Family’s Struggle through the Sri Lankan Conflict. Drawing upon theoretical frameworks from media studies, visual culture, postcolonial theory, and trauma studies, the paper investigates how the deliberate deceleration of journalistic practice and the visual-verbal hybridity of comics foster hypervisibility, ethical witnessing, and empathetic engagement. The paper argues that slowing down the process of both producing and consuming media enables a more human-centered, ethically responsible, and contextually rich form of storytelling, which is vital when engaging with histories of violence, displacement, and collective trauma. Through detailed textual and visual analysis, it demonstrates how Vanni exemplify the transformative potential of slow graphic journalism to unearth buried narratives, challenge dominant historiographies, and cultivate enduring public memory.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Prasant Mali
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/31
TI  - “Telling It Slower, Seeing It Closer”: Slow Journalism and Graphic Narratives in Vanni
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Smart Systems and Social Management (ICSSSM-2 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1024
EP  - 1035
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-533-1_62
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-533-1_62
ID  - Mali2025
ER  -